Startup Clinkle Gets $25 Million to Create Mobile Payment Standard

A startup founded by a recent Stanford grad has scored $25 million in funding from several top Silicon Valley venture capitalists to solve the problem of mobile payments.

Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Intel and Intuit are among the investors for Clinkle, which plans to release an app for university students "in the upcoming year." Lucas Duplan, Clinkle's 22 year-old founder, remained vague about how Clinkle will work, only stating that he is "building something that’s fundamentally different from everything else out there."

Duplan, pictured above, says the idea stemmed from a trip abroad during his freshman year of college. "The exchange of value is one of humanity’s most important inventions," he wrote in a blog post. "But somehow, the way in which we transact hasn’t significantly changed in decades. Instead, it’s stood idle during the invention of the PC, the Internet and the smartphone. In fact, most people around the world still rely on the same technology humans used centuries ago: paper and coins."